There was no news of any kind to be gathered from the people we talked to, nor had they even any rumours.

This was the first day I had been able to get even a short distance outside of my own quarter, and it seemed that the people of my quarter were more able in the manufacture of news or more imaginative than were the people who live in other parts of the city.  We had no sooner struck into home parts than we found news.  We were told that two of the Volunteer leaders had been shot.  These were Pearse and Connolly.  The latter was reported as lying in the Castle Hospital with a fractured thigh.  Pearse was cited as dead with two hundred of his men, following their sally from the Post Office.  The machine guns had caught them as they left, and none of them remained alive.  The news seemed afterwards to be true except that instead of Pearse it was The O’Rahilly who had been killed.  Pearse died later and with less excitement.

A man who had seen an English newspaper said that the Kut force had surrendered to the Turk, but that Verdun had not fallen to the Germans.  The rumour was current also that a great naval battle had been fought whereat the German fleet had been totally destroyed with loss to the English of eighteen warships.  It was said that among the captured Volunteers there had been a large body of Germans, but nobody believed it; and this rumour was inevitably followed by the tale that there were one hundred German submarines lying in the Stephen’s Green pond.

At half-past two I met Mr. Commissioner Bailey, who told me that it was all over, and that the Volunteers were surrendering everywhere in the city.  A motor car with two military officers, and two Volunteer leaders had driven to the College of Surgeons and been admitted.  After a short interval Madame Marckievicz marched out of the College at the head of about 100 men, and they had given up their arms; the motor car with the Volunteer leaders was driving to other strongholds, and it was expected that before nightfall the capitulations would be complete.

I started home, and on the way I met a man whom I had encountered some days previously, and from whom rumours had sprung as though he wove them from his entrails, as a spider weaves his web.  He was no less provided on this occasion, and it was curious to listen to his tale of English defeats on every front.  He announced the invasion of England in six different quarters, the total destruction of the English fleet, and the landing of immense German armies on the West coast of Ireland.  He made these things up in his head.  Then he repeated them to himself in a loud voice, and became somehow persuaded that they had been told to him by a well-informed stranger, and then he believed them and told them to everybody he met.  Amongst other things Spain had declared war on our behalf, the Chilian Navy was hastening to our relief.  For a pin he would have sent France flying westward all forgetful of her own war.  A singular man truly, and as I do think the only thoroughly happy person in our city.